[couto27]

The Nvidia shield android TV generate considerable interest between the users of avsforums.com with a dedicated thread, and that alone can say a lot about a media player, especially in a dedicated audio & video forum with the reputation of AVS.

[Sniffer77]

Hi guys, would you rate the chromebox much higher than your nuc dn2820 mainly for live tv and movies from local storage ?
I've been running dn2820 for ages but have a chromebox I've hardly used.
Cheers

[Matt Devo]

Hi guys, would you rate the chromebox much higher than your nuc dn2820 mainly for live tv and movies from local storage ?
I've been running dn2820 for ages but have a chromebox I've hardly used.
Cheers

it's significantly faster, many Chromebox users have upgraded from the N28x0 NUCs and been very happy with the performance increase, esp with deinterlacing for live TV and handling of heavy skins.

[Ned Scott]

Personally I would go for the Himedia Q10 pro. Now that it is switching to correct framerate etc and they do not need 4k (at the moment) its perfect. Also if they upgrade to a 4k tv at some point then the Q10 will handle it ( and by that time the firmware for 4k will be fully fixed)

Over an x86 system? No way. I'm a huge ARM fan, but there's no way I would recommend any ARM device over what OP is looking at. When people start spending $200-300 USD on HTPCs for raw power, and they don't need apps, then x86 is still the king.

Sorry I disagree. The Q10 pro can play any media content that any x86 system can.
However the Arm chip draws less power. in Short cheaper to run.

If you are using the OS for other things then yes maybe x86, however if you only ever run Kodi on the box then go for the cheaper to run system that can handle anything you throw at it.

I'm sorry, you're wrong. Go try to play a 12 bit HEVC (1080 or 4k, either is fine) file on the Q10. There are lots of those out in the wild. Or some of the more exotic live TV streams that come from official broadcasters. Or a high bitrate 1080P h.264 Hi10P video. There are even some audio codec situations that will bring your Q10 to it's knees.

Even if it did play those formats, OP is asking about GUI speed, especially with things such as PVR guides. A 2016 i5 or i7 NUC will absolutely destroy any ARM box out there.

EDIT: oh, and the only way the HiMedia Q10 plays most video properly is by bypassing the internal Kodi video player. Any device doing that is basically garbage for Kodi, IMO.

[ianuk2005]

Over an x86 system? No way. I'm a huge ARM fan, but there's no way I would recommend any ARM device over what OP is looking at. When people start spending $200-300 USD on HTPCs for raw power, and they don't need apps, then x86 is still the king.

Sorry I disagree. The Q10 pro can play any media content that any x86 system can.
However the Arm chip draws less power. in Short cheaper to run.

If you are using the OS for other things then yes maybe x86, however if you only ever run Kodi on the box then go for the cheaper to run system that can handle anything you throw at it.

I'm sorry, you're wrong. Go try to play a 12 bit HEVC (1080 or 4k, either is fine) file on the Q10. There are lots of those out in the wild. Or some of the more exotic live TV streams that come from official broadcasters. Or a high bitrate 1080P h.264 Hi10P video. There are even some audio codec situations that will bring your Q10 to it's knees.

Even if it did play those formats, OP is asking about GUI speed, especially with things such as PVR guides. A 2016 i5 or i7 NUC will absolutely destroy any ARM box out there.

EDIT: oh, and the only way the HiMedia Q10 plays most video properly is by bypassing the internal Kodi video player. Any device doing that is basically garbage for Kodi, IMO.

I think were getting to the point were they no longer "destroy" them. I've don't have a recent i5/i7 but the X1 in the shield has been flawless and possibly faster than my i3 in terms of pure GUI speed and that's with a large library of 1k+ movies to scroll through on a heavy skin.

Could be the next iteration that we see no noticeable difference in the top end chips on ARM and x86.

[Ned Scott]

Sure, the Shield is the exception, but it's still not more powerful than what is being discussed in this thread. However, "destroy" would still be very accurate for comparing them to the Q10.

There will always be a difference. Intel isn't standing still. It just might not be a noticeable difference for the average user, though.

[sandogo1]

What is the Chromebox box to get

[ianuk2005]

Sure, the Shield is the exception, but it's still not more powerful than what is being discussed in this thread. However, "destroy" would still be very accurate for comparing them to the Q10.

There will always be a difference. Intel isn't standing still. It just might not be a noticeable difference for the average user, though.

Yeah destroy would be accurate for a Q10 and something like a Fire TV.

Weighing up a shield vs a Chromebox your probably not going to see a difference without an actual benchmark. Vs a pi 3 they are both going to show a massive improvement.

There will always be a difference as it's architecture is completely different but it's closing and it wouldn't surprise me if something like the X2 when it's announced properly keeps up with i5/7's for the majority of tasks.

[ianuk2005]

What is the Chromebox box to get

Anything with an i7 I guess? But hey are about £600 =S

[Matt Devo]

What is the Chromebox box to get

Anything with an i7 I guess? But hey are about £600 =S

I hear there's this wonderful wiki page for Chromeboxes...

[ianuk2005]

What is the Chromebox box to get

Anything with an i7 I guess? But hey are about £600 =S

I hear there's this wonderful wiki page for Chromeboxes...

Isn't that massively outdated though in terms of what chromeboxes are available? I thought the new ones had newer gen cpu's and I would assume HDMI 2.x?

[Matt Devo]

Isn't that massively outdated though in terms of what chromeboxes are available? I thought the new ones had newer gen cpu's and I would assume HDMI 2.x?

it doesn't list the latest-model Broadwell-based devices, but from a Kodi perspective they have identical capabilities to Haswell-based ones. None have HDMI 2.x or hardware-based HEVC decoding. A Haswell 2955U Celeron Chromebox is still a solid Kodi performer if you don't need HEVC or 4K.

[tredman]

This is a very random thread. I run kodi on an i7 desktop, 2 shields, 2 RPi (2 & 3), a shield K1 tablet and a surface. In terms of actually using kodi they all run as well and as fast as I would ever need.

Why would you want a super dooper fast processor for no appreciable benefit other than a higher electricity bill?

Caveat - I also have a wetek Play v1, that is too slow to run kodi acceptably.

[Sniffer77]

Hi guys, would you rate the chromebox much higher than your nuc dn2820 mainly for live tv and movies from local storage ?
I've been running dn2820 for ages but have a chromebox I've hardly used.
Cheers

it's significantly faster, many Chromebox users have upgraded from the N28x0 NUCs and been very happy with the performance increase, esp with deinterlacing for live TV and handling of heavy skins.

Thanks Matt- now this might sound like a daft question but I'm going to ask anyway. I set this box up sometime ago on standalone openelec. I recently dropped the upgrade file to change to libreelec.
As the ssd is small, if I was to pop a new one in , what stage or how do I go about re installing libreelec.

As you can tell my knowledge of technology isn't the greatest

Thanks

[Matt Devo]

Thanks Matt- now this might sound like a daft question but I'm going to ask anyway. I set this box up sometime ago on standalone openelec. I recently dropped the upgrade file to change to libreelec.
As the ssd is small, if I was to pop a new one in , what stage or how do I go about re installing libreelec.

As you can tell my knowledge of technology isn't the greatest

Thanks

you would simply need to create the LibreELEC install media (as per their instructions), then boot it and install to the new/upgraded SSD.